Renovating
by anais mark
Summary: Drabbles about Edward and Bella remodeling an old house.  Snarky and a little dirty.  I'm sure you're surprised.
1. Chapter 1

The Twilight Saga_ and its characters belong to Stephenie Meyer, not yours truly. I think we all know better than to think Edward would ever buy a fixer-upper._

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><p><strong>I'm going to start posting my own remodeling funnies and horror stories here once in a blue moon. well, they might be funny. They might be sweet. Hopefully someone gets naked occasionally, if only for my own sake. And one day "Edward and Bella" will have a whole house. Or I really hope they do, again for selfish reasons.<strong>

**These will be short, rough and unbeta'ed. **

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><p>So, I'm eye-humping this scrumptious hunk of Vermont's finest languishing in my almost-kitchen and I have to inquire, "You ever look at a block of Monterey Jack and think, 'I'm pretty sure I could eat the whole thing?' 'Cos that's where I am right now."<p>

My husband barely looks up from his ballgame. "Um, no. I think that's genetic because your family are the only people I've seen do that."

I ogle the sharp cheddar again. _Oh, yes. You will be mine. Pale, sharp and cheesy. Just the way I like my men._

"Warm up some soup or something. That cheese is gonna get ideas about what you intend to do to it if you flirt with it all day. Can you bring me a Dr. Pepper?"

I pulled the flannel drape/picnic blanket aside that separated the "finshed" (painted drywall) portion of the house from the "unfinished" (some drywall, some bare studs—and not the sexy kind) majority. The kitchen was currently part of that majority.

The block of cheese, an uncut loaf of sourdough and a bottle of light cran-grape accompanied me to "my" room.

We'd taken to occupying separate rooms when we were working or playing on our computers. The 500 square feet of finished space was crammed with a house full of stuff. It seemed so much smaller than it was and we did our best to create some barriers.

Knowing that the renovations would take about three of four times as long as Edward had estimated made me choose to sleep in an area that would finally become a guest room. I didn't want to hate the master suite before the house was even finished.

Over the course of my day, he would stomp down the hallway a dozen times maybe.

"Do you want me to order out lunch?"

_Yes._

"Do you want to go with me to the store?"

_No._

"Have you signed that check so I can deposit it?"

_Yes._

Always mundane and always about two decibels too loud.

The only parts of life that remained unchanged and untainted occurred after lights out, as if not seeing the disaster around me lessened its impact somehow. Whatever the reason, I could dim the overhead and be a newlywed once again, a couple with no baggage.

If only.

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><p><em>I am late coming home from work. And frantic. It's been more than a month since I've missed Jeopardy and I am dying a little.<em>

_He smirks when I throw the door open, I can hear it in his voice in the next room. "All the categories I'm any good at are cleaned out but even if we start keeping score now, I'll still kick your ass."_

_My scrub top is already off, the still-attached nametag skittering under a cedar chest when it hits the tile. "I'll take that challenge but I feel like I'm taking advantage of you."_

"_You should do that."_

_Alex drones on behind me, introducing the players. With a single tug on the drawstring, my scrub bottoms fall. They never really stood a chance. I realize as I walk into the bedroom that Edward is probably naked under the sheet. _

_He shifts and I correct myself with an internal victory dance. Definitely nude._

_Do little old ladies who purchase linens as wedding presents have any idea what newlyweds do to those sheets and blankets? Surely they don't. My great aunt's heart condition would be victorious were she to see the neat little pup tent in the very center of my bed. She would most certainly take her pristine gift back if it didn't mean exposing the tent pole._

_The gift that keeps on giving._

_I'm trying not to giggle about this, trying to keep my gameface fixed as I look up and down the bed, pretending to appraise. The new sheets _are_ pretty. "Still not into sharing the bed, Mr. Cullen?"_

"_Dividing it in down the middle is not sharing, Mrs. Cullen. I have a place picked out for you right here." The tent shimmies and my giggle prevails._

_His fingers are laced behind his head. Cocky bastard._

_I straddle his waist over the sheet, carefully steering clear of his erection, and kiss him hello. I might be a sure thing, but I don't have to be easy._

_By Double Jeopardy, I am in only a bra._

_By Final Jeopardy, I have thoroughly showed him which half of this union knows their Eastern European geography and Shakespearean villains but the topics were skewed his direction and he wins. He's paying Trebek off, I just know he is._

_My grin is so huge that I know he can see my cheeks rounding up by my ears, even from behind._

"_Close your eyes."_

"_Done."_

_I feel him get out of the bed and hear the tinny clatter of him opening the top drawer of the bedside table. It's possible that I'm holding my breath. _

"_If you lay back, I'll put a pillow under you."_

_I lean back and wait for the pillow under my neck that never comes. He lifts my bottom instead._

Oh.

_My eyelids flutter and he warns me to keep them closed. Cold metal on each ankle and each is tethered to a separate bedpost, giving his warning some teeth. He never touches my wrists._

_He kisses and licks his way up and down my legs and I keep my hands to myself, mostly because he stays out of reach. But once his lips are on my navel, my breasts, I can't keep them to myself anymore. _

_As his face descends between my legs, he half-whispers that he wants to see my hands on my nipples when he looks up because his will be busy._

_And they are._

_I can't see what he's doing but I can feel his fingers trace my lips, teasing them apart before he strokes a finger between them. I'm wet and wonder how I'm going to get this stain off the cute throw pillow under me._

_Not that I care._

_His tongue replaces the finger in one long slide and my hands grasp for the edges of the mattress, forgetting their assignment._

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><p>"What do you mean you want to have people over to watch the Superbowl? Where? We don't have a couch here or a single real chair."<p>

"The living room will be done by then and we have furniture in storage."

"I know that half of that statement is true. The other half…."

It wasn't the first ridiculous self-imposed deadline Edward had tossed out since we started renovating and I was certain it wouldn't it be the last, so why was I biting? Why let myself get mad about this one?

I saw the jaw clench, the fingers pinching the bridge of his nose, and retreated to the shower before my mouth escalated the situation.

_My mouth used to be good for more than pissing him off. _

My own sarcasm was pissing _me_ off. I moved more quickly for the bathroom.

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><p><strong><em>Author's Note:<em> Feel free to leave your own horror stories. I would love to know that someone else hates grouting tile or loves the smell or lumber as much as I do. I can't wait to hear from you.**


	2. Eating In

**_Disclaimer_: Edward was subcontracted out to me for this job but I don't own him.**

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><p>Across the card-cum-dining table, I eyed my contractor suspiciously. He thought I might be amenable to loosening the time constraints on our project. Spending more time with him was something I could certainly handle. Dragging out this remodel, not so much.<p>

"You're _tired_ of eating out?"

"I'm sorry. Come again?" I snorted at my innuendo. Adolescent sex jokes were all that stood between me and impaling this lovely hunk of husband on any one of fifty-eleven plastic sporks I'd collected with the mountain of takeout we'd consumed since gutting our kitchen more than a year back. An eyeroll was all the appreciation I got for my restraint and humor. Someone in this damn union needed to respect the pun. Today would have to be my turn.

I knew my audience; that joke should've hit. _Why are you wasting my flavor, Edward Cullen? _

"Most women hate cooking every single night, Bella. Eating takeout all the time isn't the part of a kitchen remodel they complain about."

"Let's be clear: you're not suggesting more _eating out_, you're telling me I'll be eating from restaurant menus until I'm forty."

"Things have to be done in order and telling the cabinet guys to get started now would be premature."

Edward getting all earnest might've been sweet if it weren't seven in the morning. "But I love cooking and my ass expands every time I eat a boneless chicken wing. I can't take much more. And don't you miss midnight brownies…and my enchiladas? Just order the cabinets so we can get this thing done."

"Of course I love having you cook but I can't get all this drywall and wiring and plumbing done before the cabinets would get here. We've been over this."

It takes two to six weeks for cabinets to be fabricated and delivered, depending on what else Peter the cabinet guy has going on at his shop. I crossed my fingers for two and restated my firm belief. "I will move into a trailer park with a herd of cats if you don't get a kitchen in this house soon. Whatever you need help with, I'll help with it. Let's just get on it."

Let the record show that at the time I made it, I meant every word of that statement.

Ever the (pigheaded) optimist, I'd overextended myself yet again in the pursuit of getting what I wanted. Balancing halfway up a stepladder, keeping fifty-pound cabinets aligned and screwing them together was really outside the range of what I should've agreed to when my husband asked if I could help with "some screwing off." I couldn't deny him such a nicely-phrased request.

Anyone who'd seen the tool I _thought_ we'd be using for "screwing off" would have made the same wrong choice. So when he asked, I'd put on a pair of short-alls over my bikini top and held my breath for his summons.

Yeah. I was that dumb.

On the last cabinet, I pinched my finger as the final screw went in. Instead of shouting some colorful obscenity, I hissed it through my teeth and stepped off the ladder, my hand reaching for something to steady me. What it found was a half-emptied plastic bottle. I wrapped my fingers around its tiny neck and hurled it towards the Tyvek-covered front door.

And then stomped off to my room to nurse my wound.

A soft tap interrupted my reading.

"I hate to ask again but I need an extra set of hands. Would you mind?"

"No. I'll be right there."

I slipped my shoes back on and padded back into what would be my kitchen. "What can I do?"

"First of all, let me just say that if anyone appreciates the solid chunking of something when they're pissed, it's me. And you chunked that bottle of tea. But the next time you need to do it, could you maybe not throw _my_ drink?"

I chuckled. "Yeah." And then I realized why he was so sheepish. I never said why I threw his tea; I just propelled it across three rooms and fumed off.

As a means of explanation I offered my index finger, now sporting a tiny purple circle. "I pinched my finger."

He put his lips to it. "I'm so sorry. Are you sure you still want to hold this? I promise it's the last one."

"I'll be fine...really."

Five nights later, I shooed my darling husband out of the house to play soccer long enough for me cook a meal in our new kitchen. I'd been so sneaky getting ready for its christening.

Earlier in the week, I snatched the box labeled "PoTS & PaNS" from storage and stashed it in the trunk of my car. The groceries had been purchased, the strawberries and wine were chilling and my coup de grace—THE highlight of the evening—sat innocuously in my newly-painted dining room. I'd worked so hard on it and Edward had no idea what it really was. A bag from the lingerie store had been stowed under the bed in a boot box for almost forty-eight hours.

I felt positively devilish as I opened the cardboard box of…crap.

What _was_ all this? It wasn't "PoTS & PaNS" at all. It was "PoTS & PaNS I'D NEVER IN aLL MY LIFE CaRE To USE." It contained one 9x9 metal baking pan that had seen better days catching drips from leaky sinks, a sugar bowl in the shape of a Florida orange, a dozen ramekins that I'd meant to use for crème brulee and a sauce pan so tiny that Barbie might use it for a dinner party in the Dream House.

How could I sauté in that pan? Two mushrooms might overflow the thing, much less enough for chicken marsala.

Instead of admitting defeat, I leaned a bit too heavily on skills that were not quite up to the task. They had gotten me this far, after all. In the Barbieware, I boiled pasta a spoonful at a time until I had enough for two healthy servings. The brownie pan found itself repurposed as a sauté pan. And then used again to pan-fry chicken.

The saucette thimblepot boiled over six times. The brownie pan scorched in the time it took for me to lift the chicken out and arrange it on a platter (without one brave comrade-in-arms who was my test breast).

Feasts had been assembled in the time it took me to prepare my simple meal. What a joke of a start for my new kitchen. I could practically hear the new gas range wondering where the hell I'd assembled such a motley assortment of "cookery" for the sole purpose of humiliating him.

It mattered not to me. The most important part of tonight wasn't the dinner or stroking my sexy new stove's ego. It was the dessert. It was all about the dessert.

Over drinks with a girlfriend, I had discovered that the young couple who'd purchased a table that once belonged to my parents was trying to unload it before they moved into a smaller place. I called immediately and agreed to buy the thing back for one hundred dollars. They'd slathered it down in coffee-colored stain without having sanded the old oak stain and polyurethane off. It was a wreck.

An awful-smelling, viscous wreck that made people at work wonder if I was moonlighting as a mechanic to make ends meet.

I vaporized, scrubbed and scraped for a week before the old stain was a bad memory, then I sanded it until the surface felt like velvet. It took a few tries before I got the stain just right (equal parts oak and walnut stain with satin poly on top) but it was worth every bit of effort. This table was prettier than the one I'd done homework and science projects and eaten dinner on.

For two weeks I'd been working on the new dining room table between runs to the hardware store and stints as Edward's lovely assistant. I only got the opportunity to work alone when I could lure him away from the house. I'd enlisted the help of every guy we knew to do it.

Four fantasy football drafts, a soccer league and new rotor button on someone else's convertible later, I'd refinished the storied hunk of wood in the dining room.

My vessel was due for a maiden voyage and I couldn't help but smile as I set the table.

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><p>Edward arrived at 7:35, just like he always did. I plated the food and poured the drinks while he showered. I'd already slipped on most of my new purchases under the little sundress and apron I wore. They made the skirt pouf out in a perfectly appropriate Mrs. Cleaver way but the extra swish made me sashay my hips just a little. I made Beaver jokes while I worked in the kitchen.<p>

_Now, Ward, don't be too hard on the Beaver tonight…darling, tonight would be a great opportunity to show the Beaver some special attention...Ward, maybe you'd be interested in letting the Beaver see some of your moves from college tonight. _

The dimmer Edward installed for the chandelier deserved mad props. Everything glittered in the low light and I didn't have to worry about catching the joint on fire to make it happen.

The pinot blanc was lovely in my glass. I was holding it up to the light and twirling the stem when I heard the shower shut off. I hadn't felt such butterflies in my stomach since before my wedding.

"I'm just putting some clothes on. I'll be right in. Can we eat on the table yet?"

I almost snorted my wine. "Definitely. Take your time."

He grinned from ear to ear when he saw the table set with a proper dinner on it. "Nice job, Bella. Nice job. Your parents will be so surprised when they see this here."

"I hope so." I poured tea in his glass and sat across from him, waiting for his reaction to the food.

"You were right. I can't believe how much I missed eating in. Screw takeout. This is so much better. Did you get the pans out of storage by yourself? I hate you going to that place alone."

"Funny you should ask." Over the very chicken and sautéed vegetables I'd mistreated on my new stove I told him about the culinary sacrilege that had taken place leading up to our meal. As I told him about the boil-over and chicken rites, I thought that I should've considered braving the tatted-up tweeners playing bad punk in the storage unit next to ours to get a proper pan.

When I finished, and he'd finished wiping up the marsala sauce he'd snorted, he leaned forward and kissed my hand. "Thank you…even more now that I know what a pain in the ass this was."

"I've never had a romantic dinner at this table. It's kind of…different. All I've ever done here is school work and family dinners and lectures from Charlie."

"When did Charlie ever lecture you? You were a model child. You dressed like a nun, made the honor roll every nine weeks and never got called to the principal's office that I can remember."

I was suddenly interested in rearranging the vegetables on my plate. "I could've been a naughty schoolgirl. You didn't actually hang out with me then."

"A naughty schoolgirl in our tiny school, I would've noticed. Dear baby Jesus, would I have noticed."

"Apparently not." I winked and readjusted the pleats under my sundress.

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><p>As I nibbled chocolate-dipped strawberries alone at the new table, I pondered whether 7:35 could be considered the highwater mark of our mostly disastrous evening. Or maybe teasing Edward about the naughty schoolgirl he didn't know was the best moment.<p>

It certainly wasn't now.

Edward's phone rang as I carried dessert from the kitchen to the dining room and he went dark like an unplugged Xbox.

Once again, I leaned a little too hard on a skill set I didn't have. Bella Cullen would never have "Call Girl" or "Stripper Extraordinaire" behind her name. Maybe if my name was Bunny or Candy or Peaches, but not Isabella Marie. Isabella is a serious business kind of name. No funny business there.

I'd already left the sundress and apron in a messy pile in the pantry, and fluffed up some cleavage for good measure, when I brought the strawberries and chocolate over to the table. I straightened the hastily donned tie as I set them down, something I'd seen my husband do a thousand times. The arched back and pushed-out boobs were an ad lib and I wobbled on my heels. Edward's eyes widened and he kissed me on the forehead before he stood up and walked into his study, phone pressed to his ear.

What the—?

Well, at least one of us could have dessert. He certainly wouldn't be getting any because either someone was bleeding or I'd be too angry to speak to him.

The door to Edward's study opened and he took a few cautious steps toward the table…and me.

"So where were we?"

"You're kidding, right?"

"Mostly I was hoping that some imaginary pause button had frozen that moment exactly where it was just before Newton called me. Cockblocker."

"I'd say 'frozen' is exactly what you did to that moment. It was hot; now it's ice-cold. Frozen indeed."

"He wante—"

I stood, effectively cutting him off. "Doesn't matter what he wanted. In fact, knowing about the phone call you chose over _this,_" I indicated my trollopy get-up, "could only serve to make me angrier. Strawberry?"

The motherfucker ate the strawberry I shoved in his face like it was the sweetest thing he'd ever put his lips around. He closed his eyes and took the whole berry in his mouth, juice dripping down my hand as he sank his teeth into it.

Delicious. Couldn't he see he was interrupting my pout?

He caught the little droplet just as it reached the inside of my wrist. "Delicious."

My mouth was open, slack, and he took the moment by storm.

When he let me take a breath, I whispered, "But you weren't interested in all this earlier."

Edward moved toward me to close the tiny gap I'd created. "Oh, I was interested. Answering that phone was stupid; I couldn't keep my mind on Newton anyway."

I stepped back. "Good."

He stole the space again and I retreated until my bare bottom found the edge of the table. Edward lifted me onto the wood.

"Bella. When am I ever half-hearted about taking your clothes off?"

"Never…it was just—"

"That first part is all I need you to hear yourself say. Never. I'm never disinterested if you are naked. Or even half-naked. Or thinking about taking your shirt off. And what do you have on here?" He fingered the tiny black tie that fell between my breasts.

"A schoolgirl outfit. It's silly. I had this whole intro planned, where I was going to remind you about doing years of homework on this table and what a perfect little student I'd been and how maybe now I was interested in being not-so-perfect."

He examined the body of evidence now at his disposal. "I'm buying. Do tell."

"No. I feel ridiculous now."

"I've got some words in mind for how you look that would make the Urban Dictionary people blush but none of them are a synonym for 'ridiculous.' I could maybe go with 'ridiculously hot' in a pinch. Tell me the last school project you remember doing on this table."

"My exit essay for World Lit. It was a joint project with Alice comparing the use of color in _Madame Bovary_ and _The Great Gatsby_. She left at like midnight and I sat here until the sky was dusky, took a nap and went to school the next day. We got maximum marks."

"Oh." He scrubbed his splayed fingers over the crown of his head and scrunched up one side of his face in demonstration of his disappointment.

"What? We worked our asses off."

"You got every available point?"

"Every damn one."

"Maybe you could've used some extra credit in a subject you weren't so good at, then?"

The lightbulb went off. "Calculus. Definitely Calculus. Differential equations were the bane of my existence."

"I think we should start with something a little more basic, Miss Bella."

"I'm pretty ambitious, Mr. Cullen, but we can start wherever you'd like." I couldn't help it. I giggled.

At this point, I was very, very glad that I'd spent so much time with the 500-grit sandpaper on all the table edges. There was not a single rough patch biting into the bare skin rubbing against it. I remember thinking that I might even want to round off the corners some more.

"Let's talk about this uniform. I'm not sure it meets the dress code." He inspected the tie again. "Is that knot even a half-Windsor?"

I swallowed hard, suddenly aware that the pre-dinner butterflies were back and they were migrating south. "It might be."

He tried to pretend that he was disappointed. "No way that's regulation. It'll have to go."

"But it's attached to the shirt."

"I can see I'll have to take you through this." Slowly he untied the tie and unbuttoned the shirt.

I slid it off my shoulders and took my arms out of the sleeves. If a neighbor caught a peek through the window, they'd think it was laundry night. I only walked around half-clothed on laundry night.

"Now, Miss Swan, your participation grade in this class is really where the big points are. There's a great deal of improvement that can be made in that area."

The lacy white bra was pretty flimsy, not a garment that would last through the day at work but it provided the exact ratio of bounce to cleavage I needed in this situation. Edward didn't even push the thing to the side when he lapped at my nipples, pinching and rolling the one not in his mouth.

I arched my neck back and bit my lip. The migrating butterflies were a soaring, throbbing mass.

Tit for tat, I began unbuttoning his shirt, his jeans. I lowered the zipper and pulled them over his hips until they fell around his ankles. Fingering a pigtail, I looked at him doe-eyed. "You'll need to step back so I can clear those out of the way."

When he did, I dropped like the Times Square Ball on New Year's, wrapping my fingers around his rock-hard shaft as I guided him into my mouth. He groaned quietly. I'd aced this class.

I started with a slow rhythm but just as I began to increase the pace, he put his hands under my arms as if he were picking me up. I rose reluctantly, wondering what he had up his sleeve.

He put his arms around me and unsnapped the bra, looping it gently over an arm of the low-hanging chandelier. I giggled like a real schoolgirl as he reached under my skirt and grazed his thumb over the mound of flesh he found. When he decided he'd tortured me enough, he slid the thong down my legs and hung it next to the matching bra.

I hopped up on the table and wrapped my legs around his waist, eager to get to the main event. Instead of pushing into me, Edward pulled over two chairs, placed them under my feet and easily fit in the gap between my legs. He pulled my bottom as far forward as he could and crouched below the table. My ass lifted in the air as I felt his tongue slide over me.

Hell, yes.

My feet started out on the chairs, but as Edward worked his magic between my legs they began to drift closer and closer together until my thighs gripped his shoulders. Briefly I feared I might suffocate my poor husband, my concern but a stray bit of altruism erased by my impending orgasm. I came hard, my legs around his neck in a reverse half-Windsor.

Later he told me he'd risk it again.

He didn't let me bask long, sliding into me and causing immediate aftershock. I shivered and laughed.

"What?"

"You know what. You did that on purpose."

"Oh…you mean _this._" He slid in and out slowly and I bit my lip to keep from moaning.

Edward pushed farther into me, using the waistband of the tiny plaid skirt to hold on. "I intend to do that over and over again."

I arched my back and relaxed into the rhythm he set, a second orgasm building quickly. He picked up speed and I didn't bother to bite my lip when I came. I felt him push into me one last time and wrapped my legs around him tightly.

He leaned forward to kiss me. "Full marks for that, Miss Swan."

"I might need a little more help soon."

"I'll fit you in anytime."

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><p>The next Sunday, I invited my parents over for a meal courtesy of my new kitchen and to see what I'd done to their old table. They were as impressed as I was with Edward's handiwork.<p>

My mom ran her fingers over the wood. "So smooth. Nice job, Bella." And then, the award for "Most Disturbing Compliment" went to her as well when she put two hands on the tabletop, rocked it to check that it wasn't wobbly and remarked casually, "Sturdier than it used to be as well. You must have tightened the joints."

The eyebrow waggle sealed my need for emergency therapy.

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><p><em><strong>Author's Note: <strong>_ My darling Clementine did double duty (_twice_ the sexy for my inbox) on this, as both Comma Ninja AND banner-maker. She should get more credit than me…though she may not want it.

Much love to you, Mal and Leo! Everyone deserves a happy ending, not just Bella and Edward.

And much love to all of you who helped them get their many happy returns. You're quite a group.


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